Year 2023/2024
December 19: Body in Ruins: Brandon Cronenberg’s Cinema of Exhaustion
December 19, 2023
Join Weird Research Group for the another meeting of Weird Medicine Series! This talk will focus on “the principle of somatic wholeness,” that is the idea that the body is to be “understood as a sovereign self: closed, contained, unified, and under rational control”
Year 2023/2024
January 25: New Technologies And Their Impact – From The Psychiatrist’s POV
January 25, 2024
Join Weird Research Group for the fifth meeting of Weird Medicine Series! The talk with psychiatrist Joachim Budny will serve as an occasion to exchange perspectives and information about the impact of new technologies on our everyday lives and well-being while staying close to this year’s theme of WEIRD MEDICINE.
Year 2023/2024
January 23: A New Life: Memory, Identity, and Ethics of Mind Manipulation in To The Moon
January 23, 2024
Join Weird Research Group for the fourth meeting of Weird Medicine Series! During the meeting, we will take a closer look at the game To The Moon, which will provide a starting point for a discussion about memory, ethics, and the future of psychology.
Year 2023/2024
October 30: Weird Halloween: Normal Again? The Portrayal of Mental Health(Care) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
October 30, 2023
Join Weird Fictions Research Group for the first Weird Medicine meeting this semester about classic 90s TV show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
American Studies Colloquium Series
May 25: English Language Bias and the Generalizability Problem in the Face of Global Linguistic Diversity
May 25, 2023
According to different sources, there are between 6,000 to 8,000 languages spoken in the world today. However, many academic fields tend to rely on English as a model language and do not question the generalizability of findings from studies done with English speakers. This talkwill illustrate how English is in some respects unusual and how focusing on it exclusively might provide a biased picture of language and the human mind.
American Studies Colloquium Series
May 18: Understanding Appalachian Otherness
May 18, 2023
The Appalachian region of the US is a place surrounded in myth and stereotypes. This presentation explains the various scholarly and popular understandings of Appalachia, contrasting the definition of the region based upon geographic, economic, and cultural criteria, and discussing the differences between Northern and Southern Appalachia.
Year 2022/2023
May 9: Call of the Deep: Mermaids in Film and Fiction
May 9, 2023
We’ll talk mermaids old and new. The ones with lovely fins and the ones with sharp teeth. We’ll journey through the unruly waters of Greek mythology, medieval (AND communist!) Warsaw and the Mariana Trench. We’ll talk mermaid taxonomy and history. We’ll talk about Mami Wata and the Little Mermaid. And we’ll talk how natureculture continuum and gender binary are traversed and challenged through the immensely popular figures of mer-people.
News
MOST Student Exchange Program
April 26, 2023
Applications for the MOST Student Exchange Program are now open! Apply until May 15.
Free trial to Project MUSE Journals
April 26, 2023
Enjoy the free trial access to Project MUSE Journals: Premium Collection until June 8, 2023.
News
Visit our stand during the UW Open Day!
April 6, 2024
Learn about our BA and MA programs in American Studies during the University Open Day!
News
Visit our stand during the UW Open Day
April 18, 2023
Learn about our BA and MA programs in American Studies during the University Open Day this Saturday
News
Karolina Krasuska awarded a grant
April 11, 2023
Prof. Karolina Krasuska has been awarded a 4-year Preludium Bis grant to fully fund a PhD project under her supervision.
Year 2022/2023
April 27: Sex under Western Gaze
April 27, 2023
Did women have better sex – or better anything – under socialism? What do Eastern Europeans think about how Ghodsee’s book “Why Women Have Better Sex under Socialism” presents “our” history? Join Dr. Ludmiła Janion to talk over these issues with Erasmus+ visiting scholar Prof. Kornelia Slavova.
Year 2022/2023
April 25: Blood, Guts, Quirks and Frames: Greek Myths in Video Games
April 25, 2023
Nearly three thousand years ago, in ancient Greece, mythological and semi-legendary reigned in people’s hearts: heroes, demi-gods, monsters and more. Nowadays, all these myths are still, if not more, popular. This lecture will take a look at how contemporary video games take inspiration from ancient myths, often giving in return not only better visuals, but new depth, new meaning, even whole new stories.
Year 2022/2023
April 20: Appropriations of Emily Dickinson: the Persistence of the Poet
April 20, 2023
Join us for a meeting with Charles Holdefer, the author of several novels and numerous short stories, one of which won the Pushcart Prize. We will speak about his most recent novel, “Don’t Look at Me” (2022), in which the protagonist discovers a cache of unknown letters from Emily Dickinson to her lover which includes a major, hitherto unknown poem.
Year 2022/2023
April 13: Meet author Menachem Kaiser and translator Monika Skowron
April 13, 2023
It is our pleasure to invite you to the meeting with Menachem Kaiser, the author of a critically acclaimed, award-winning debut memoir “Plunder” and Monika Skowron, the book’s translator into Polish. The unusual focus on property is a way for the author to critique rote, exploitative, and excessively sentimental “third generation” memoirs written by descendants of Holocaust survivors visiting the “old country”.